I have been reading...

I wonder if I have my reading mojo back? Yes, I think maybe I have. Halfway through May and I have three books under my belt. Not heaps, but not too bad either. 

First up is a reread for me, I think I've only read this once, back in my late teens, but I'm not sure about that. The thing is, the movies of The Lord of the Rings are so familiar that I mix them up in my head with the books. Anyway, my first book of May was a reread of The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. 

This needs very little introduction. There's a special ring. Bilbo the Hobbit took it off Gollum in The Hobbit, and brought it home to The Shire with him. When you put the ring on it renders you invisible but it's far more dangerous than that. So powerful in fact that Sauron, the dark lord of the wizards, is searching for it. Dark forces are on the move and Frodo, Bilbo's nephew, is now tasked with getting the ring to Mordor where it can be destroyed. The first part of the story covers the journey from The Shire to the river Aduin. Many adventures are here included and I had forgotten most of them, despite being quite familiar with the movie. The book was huge fun, a lot more readable than I had remembered, I was sure it was a more difficult read, but it simply wasn't. What it was though, was a lot creepier than I remembered, very much full of suspense and edge of your seat moments. Really pleased that I reread it after all this time and, although I wasn't sure if I would, I'm now pretty sure I'll continue on and reread The Two Towers, probably in the autumn.

 

After that, or rather, alongside it, I read Bookish by Lucy Mangan. This is the author's second book about the joy of reading, and what's it's like to be so bookish that it matters more than anything else. I thought that was an interesting thing and, having thought about it, I realise that I'm not quite as addicted as that. Yes, I like to read every day, and I'm constantly buying new books (although 'that' is arguably a different hobby), but I don't think I'm quite on the author's level of obsessiveness. 'But' an interesting look at the books the author loved once she got into adulthood and I like that she is in no way a book snob; all bookish life his here within the pages of this book.

Next was a standalone book by P.G. Wodehouse, The Girl in Blue. 

The plot of this is very complicated, although it doesn't seem quite that bad while you're reading it. Jerry is engaged to Vera, a gold-digger who won't marry him until he forces his uncle to release his trust money. Doing jury service he meets Jane, and falls head over heels in love. His uncle sends him off to Mellingham Hall, the family pile, to find a missing miniature, only someone else is also looking for it. And Jane is also there, she's suddenly become an heiress and Jerry feels awkward as he himself does not want to appear to be a gold-digger. There's a lot more going on than this and it's all huge fun. And Wodehouse of course had one of the funniest turns of phrase in the English language, I was constantly laughing a lot as I do love an author who knows how to play with words (Terry Pratchett is another such one). This is a standalone, nothing to do with Jeeves and Wooster or Blandings but, to be honest, it is of that ilk, with loads of eccentric family members, misunderstandings and madness and whatnot. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will look at more of Wodehouse's standalones amd maybe revisit Jeeves and Wooster. I also have Wodehouse's book of golfing short stories which I started but didn't get very far with, so I must return to that. 

My current read is this:
 

Murder in the Moor was apparently the only book Thomas Kindon wrote and he's a mystery in himself as apparently no one knows who he was. He's called the moor 'Dukesmoor', but it's very clearly Dartmoor in Devon, which is fun as I know it. The plot involves a detective inspector on a walking holiday and a dead body beside a pool. Fantastic sense of place so I'm enjoying it very much so far. 

I hope you're all having a good reading month, finding lots of good books to read and keeping well.